Silence Speaks

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY

(CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO VIEW THE ENLARGED SIZE, TO SEE THE KIND OF OSCAR SHE HOLDS IN HER HAND.)



COURTESY OF WIKI:

The modern Mother's Day holiday was created by Anna Jarvis and it's now celebrated on various days in many places around the world. It complements Father's Day, the celebration honoring fathers.

This holiday is relatively modern, being created at the start of the 20th century, and should not be confused with the early pagan and Christian traditions honoring mothers, or with the 16th century celebration of Mothering Sunday, which is also known as Mother's Day in the UK. (Sundays are pretty memorable huh? Rmb SS - Bloody Sunday in N Ireland?)

In most countries the Mother's Day celebration is a recent holiday derived from the Mothering Sunday holiday in the UK.

It is celebrated in Australia, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Malaysia, India, Canada, and United States each year on the second Sunday of May.

History:
Different countries celebrate Mother's Day on various days of the year because the day has a number of different origins.

One school of thought claims this day emerged from a custom of mother worship in ancient Greece, which kept a festival to Cybele, a great mother of Greek gods. This festival was held around the Vernal Equinox around Asia Minor and eventually in Rome itself from the Ides of March (15 March) to 18 March.

The ancient Romans also had another holiday, Matronalia, that was dedicated to Juno, though mothers were usually given gifts on this day.

In most countries, Mother's Day is a recent observance derived from the holiday as it has evolved in North America and Europe. Many African countries adopted the idea of one Mother's Day from the British tradition, although there are many festivals and events celebrating mothers within the many diverse cultures on the African continent that long pre-date colonization. In Nepal and other hindu tradition, its called "Mata Tirtha Aunshi" or "Mother Pilgrimage fortnight".

Did you know?
Nine years after the first official Mother's Day, commercialization of the U.S. holiday became so rampant that Anna Jarvis herself became a major opponent of what the holiday had become and spent all her inheritance and the rest of her life fighting what she saw as an abuse of the celebration.

Later commercial and other exploitations of the use of Mother's Day infuriated Anna and she made her criticisms explicitly known throughout her time.[16][1] She criticized the practice of purchasing greeting cards, which she saw as a sign of being too lazy to write a personal letter. She was arrested in 1948 for disturbing the peace while protesting against the commercialization of Mother's Day, and she finally said that she "wished she would have never started the day because it became so out of control ...".

Economic Effects: (lol)
Mother's Day continues to this day to be one of the most commercially-successful U.S. occasions. According to the National Restaurant Association, Mother's Day is now the most popular day of the year to dine out at a restaurant in the United States.

For example, according to IBISWorld, a publisher of business research, Americans will spend approximately $2.6 billion on flowers, $1.53 billion on pampering gifts—like spa treatments—and another $68 million on greeting cards.

Mother's Day will generate about 7.8% of the U.S. jewelry industry's annual revenue in 2008, with custom gifts like mother's rings.


BTW, MSN'S 10 questions to ask your mom article is fascinating.
Check it out: http://lifestyle.msn.com/your-life/simple-moments-of-joy/articlers.aspx?cp-documentid=19238813&page=0

Maybe i'll ask my mom soon. Not today. We uhh kinda had a minor disagreement. Next year?

posted by wantington-ny @ 4:55 PM